Okay, a bit of strangeness/frustration that I'm hoping someone can help me figure out. About a year ago, I got an ASUS Tuf 15 gaming laptop. I buy gaming laptops because I occasionally game, but they also tend to be spec'd out good for audio.

Had a lot of problems with that one that made me think there was some sort of hardware problem... it came with Win 11, but for some reason it was sluggish to the point of unusable - windows hanging, blue circle all the time, etc, so I downgraded it to Win 10. Worked fine for normal operations for the most part after that, but would get some strange hanging in Reaper all the time. Go to save, hangs. Press record, hangs for 5 or 10 secs before starting. While playing/recording, strange hangs in the middle of tunes, with the red overload/interrupt thing going off (even though the recording itself continues, as does the sound). Made no sense, as I've run reaper for years on every computer I've had, each one less powerful than the one I got after it. I ran latency monitor and it did show I had some sort of interrupts going on that I couldn't figure out. The performance meter in reaper never showed high CPU or disk usage, so it was really hard to figure out.

Said hell with it, gave the computer to my wife for everyday use, and last month got a ROG Strix, spec'd out nice, 64G of ram, 2tb HD, good processor. It runs everything on Win 11 fine... except when I open up the daw. I'm still getting the hanging in reaper with the red alert thing going off. Exact same behavior - random hangs, and it's really disrupting my workflow. Ran Latency Monitor, said everything is fine. CPU's not even close to max, nor is disk transfer. I should note this behavior happens no matter what I'm running. I can have only one or two audio tracks or be running Kontakt and Omnisphere with multiple instruments, still does it.

I have no idea how to troubleshoot this. ASUS support is frustrating/useless. Anyone have any suggestions? I can't imagine this being something specific to reaper. My interface is a Scarlett 2nd gen tied to an Octopre by ADAT connector and I have the latest driver. I wish there was a way to pinpoint exactly what was going on when the thing freezes. Using the new Reaper 7 but this was also happening under Reaper 6.


Thanks in advance.

 

I would install a wave editor and maybe another DAW. If your sound card, driver, plugins and any other software are working correctly, they will work in the second DAW or wave editor. Then you know your problem is very likely something to fix in Reaper. Even Audacity: https://www.audacityteam.org

Otherwise, if I had to, I would guess that: "My interface is a Scarlett 2nd gen tied to an Octopre by ADAT connector and I have the latest driver" is your problem. Have you had this setup working all together prior to this? Since you are using ADAT, maybe you need to change the word clock source. spdif and adat optical can carry their own clock source and you have to link things up that way.

Which 2nd Gen model do you have? I would disconnect the Octopre to get it out of the way while you try to figure this out.

Please do not entertain the idea your brand new computer is cause of failure, when you have 2 Focusrites digitally connected. The other one did the same thing.

 

Last edited: Dec 23, 2023

Had more or less exactly the same issue around REAPER 7.01
For years I could count the times REAPER crashed or was misbehaved with one hand's fingers then suddenly I was onto double digits in a matter of hours.
I thought something was up with v7 but no, just the usual culprits, MS and Windows.
Somehow my graphics card drivers got trashed, probably due to some Windows update but everything was as though nothing had happened. So I didn't suspect anything fishy in that part of the realm.
I tried uninstalling plugins, changing templates, reinstalling REAPER, etc.
After some detective work which involved actually opening the Nvidia CP I suddenly realized there was something wrong.
DDU to the rescue, reinstalled the drivers. Rebbot and voila, everything was good.

Btw anyone not being able to open file explorer after last December updates? Yes, you guessed it, it's the updates. After uninstalling, everything is fine.

My bad though, Windows 10 only started being stable for me like 1 year ago, so Windows 11 updates? I should've know...
Take care

 

BTW Meryy Xmas everyone

 

This is why I recommended a simple wave editor. Getting your interface figured out doesn't get much simpler. It works or it doesn't, but you can also check that your plugin format and driver are not causing the issue.

This is a good guess also, since it is a gaming laptop. It probably has a nice GPU.

 

Although probably not the same issue as yours I had a similar problem with Windows 10 hanging if I opened File Explorer waiting for files to appear like it had to think a while and process and was very annoying amongst doing other Windows tasks and I had been using ZoneAlarm (Free) for over 10 years and it turned out to be the problem but didn't find out until I did a complete new install. I have Asus ROG Hero Motherboard and find best not to overclock anything in Bios when working with Audio and being a Gaming Laptop it probably like mine was overclocked & tuned especially for gaming

 

I was having the same problem last year with Reaper 6. But only on the new computer.

 

Yes, this is the same setup I've had for probably the last 4 laptops at least, and it worked flawlessly until I got that laptop last year and now this one. Word clock and all that is set correctly. I will try disconnecting the OctoPre, though, and see if that makes a difference.

 

Scarlett 18i20

 

I used that interface for a few years with my macs and it was horrible. It was the software though, not really the hardware. It would drop connections between it and the laptop. It could take multiple reboots for the software to re-detect the connected 18i20.

The MK2 software was Focusrite Mix Control software. The Mk3 shipped with Focusrite Control, and would not work with the older program. I think you can use either, because you have the MK2. Did you already "upgrade" ? Is there a way you can open your DAW with the plugins disabled?

I don't use Windows, but maybe you should add which specific version and build number of Windows you have installed. Maybe someone will have something closer to your setup, but using a lite or Oprekin windows version.

 

Did you reinstall windows from scratch when you bought the new laptop or did you clone your old drive? Did you try another interface? Did you try another USB cable for the interface?

 

Reaper 6 is working fine on my Windows 10 Asus laptop.

First thing I would try is to install Asio4All and see if Reaper works with the integrated soundcard.

If there are still audio drop-outs:

1. Disable core parking.
2. Disable the E cores in BIOS or use software that will force Reaper to only use the P cores.

 

It was a fresh installation. I have tried a different usb cable, several, actually.

 

I'm using Focusrite Control, but again, when I was on two laptops ago, I was still using FC with no problems, and it is the same problem on Win 10 and 11.

When you say 'upgrade', did you mean using FC? I can open the daw with plugins disabled... are you suggesting do that and then run some projects and see if it still happens?

 

Those sound a bit risky if I have no idea what I'm doing... I have tried it with ASIO4all, haven't done it with this one.

 

There could a few issues with active/non-active cores. Have you tried the following solution to start?

How to disable CPU core parking in Windows 11

 

No, but I will take a look at this, thank you. I guess another question I have is there some sort of diagnostic tool I could use that would help me pinpoint the issue?

 

No, I was just asking which version of the Focusrite Software you are running. "Mix Control" shipped with the older units.

The diagnostic tool to use is another wave editor or DAW that uses the same interface drivers as your DAW. Then you know it is not anything to do with your new cpu's settings. Or you will chase your tail.

Do the CPU test for the Virus DSP56300 emulator. https://dsp56300.wordpress.com/osirus/

 

Last edited: Dec 25, 2023

I went and unparked all of my cores. I did it for all of my profiles (I never really use the laptop when it's not plugged in). I'll fire up the DAW tonight and let you know if it did that. It would make sense if this was the problem, as I had a similar cpu on my last computer that gave me the problems.

 

Last edited: Jan 2, 2024

The Nvidia drivers issue is an old one that still messes with many people's DAW machines to this day. IIRC, the first time I heard of it was 4-5 years ago. If you are using Nvidia GPU's, that's the most likely culprit. I'm not sure if there's an easy fix to this problem (I haven't used Nvidia GPU's, or dedicated GPU's at all, for many years), but as the @wacha said; you can try installing some older Nvidia drivers and see if the issue disappears. If your CPU has integrated graphics, you can try disabling the Nvidia card altogether and see if Reaper works fine when you are using the CPU integrated graphics.